Jaroslav Pelikan (1923-2006) was a most distinguished scholar, author of many books popular and scholarly, most notably, the landmark five-volume set The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine. As this NYT obit explains, he began his scholarly faith journey as a Lutheran (he’s also known for an important collection of Luther’s works), but he eventually converted to Eastern Orthodoxy.
One of the best gifts my wife ever gave me was that set, although I’m ashamed to say I’ve only read about 2/3 of the first volume, and 1/3 of the fourth, even if I’ve dipped in here and there into the others. But this last month, I discovered at Provo’s best used bookstore, Pioneer Books, The Melody of Theology: A Philosophical Dictionary, a somewhat more popular-audience book by Pelikan, and the topic of this post. And this one, I’ve already read 3/5!
Theology is one tough subject. I remember a time my fellow Fordham pol-sci grad student Paul Seaton and I were discussing the more extensive course and exam requirements faced by the theology grad students, and Paul—who is a true sage, whose extensive translation work1 perhaps obscures the depth of his own erudition and scholarly insight—said something along these lines: “Proper education in theology is an impossibility for any human institution.” In theory, the finished theology student would know Greek, Hebrew, church history, Bible hermeneutics, all areas of philosophy that touch on theology—which potentially is all philosophy—, would acquire some prudence about contemporary church politics, and would avoid losing or corrupting his or her faith due to the snares the Devil seems to set particularly for Christian ministers. Yikes!
I wonder what Paul would add to that or qualify about that now, after more than a decade of training candidates for the Roman Catholic priesthood at St. Mary’s Seminary.
But laymen have a responsibility to learn theology also. My pastor at St. John’s Utah, for example, regularly exhorts his Anglican (ACNA) flock to do the hard work of knowing how to best talk about the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity, and especially to potential converts from a Mormon background, as the LDS church denies it.
One great and necessary thing about libraries, and about used bookstores, is that they make possible the sort of moment when you discover some treasure of a book you weren’t looking for. I’m not talking about a rare or valuable book, necessarily, or even about one of those books remarkable for just being so unique—no, what I especially mean is one of those books that in some way rocks or deeply enriches your perspective. Often, given the nature of bookstacks, it is a book related to some topic you already were interested in, but sometimes…it’s a book largely out of the blue, or coming from just outside the margins of your present horizons. No search engine can duplicate the experience. Millennials and Gen-Z-ers wanting to elude your formation by the Borg, get thee to a library! Or to a good used bookstore.
Such instances can change your life, like the time when as a young secondary teacher I picked up Mortimer Adler’s essay-collection introduction to his Great Books educational philosophy, Reforming Education. I remember devouring it between Boogie-board sessions at La Jolla Shores and others of my hometown San Diego beaches, and within a few years, its influence would send me to St. John’s College, Santa Fe, the gloriously Great-Books-only college (recently celebrated by Zena Hitz), and subsequently, into my entire academic career.
Reading room at St. John’s College, Santa Fe. Most happy memories…
I don’t think stumbling upon this particular Pelikan title is changing my life, exactly, but it has proven a welcome change from my usual diet of political philosophy, Great Books-related fare, constitutional politics, music-journalism, history, and classics. But it is rejuvenating the education I’ve already had over the years in theology, doctrine, and Christian history. Strengthening my hold on truths time had loosened my grip on, and giving me fresh ways of thinking about them.
Previously, one of my difficulties with theological books has been a feeling of being overwhelmed, given all the tasks seemingly necessary to tackle them right. I’m basically an evangelical Christian, and I remember eagerly reading the first two volumes—in fact, around the same time I attended the St. John’s College graduate institute—of the systematic theology by my favorite evangelical theologian, Donald Bloesch. Then I got the volume titled God the Almighty, where Bloesch went into all the heavy-duty philosophical theology stuff on proofs for God, and on the Trinity also, and I started in, trying to correlate it with things I’d been reading at St. John’s like Thomas Aquinas, or things I’d been reading with some of the Eastern Orthodox friends I’d made in Santa Fe, and…well, the book gradually drifted up to the shelf…
If you’ve had similar experiences, the best thing about The Melody of Theology is its format as a “dictionary,” but compiled and written in a way that highlights Pelikan’s own scholarly journey as a historian of doctrine, and his particular interests. You get on average two-to-three pages on a particular entry, let us say, ATONEMENT or HARNACK or SACRAMENT, and then you’re done, but often with a desire to go to another entry that’s been mentioned. If you’ve studied these topics before, it’s a way to remind yourself of truths you’ve already grasped, noticing Pelikan’s particular emphases and convictions as you go, but I assume his approach also works for the first-time student, as I felt well-instructed on certain topics that were largely new to me.
Here’s twenty of my favorite entries (from nearly ninety total), which will give you a notion of the book’s pattern and scope:
APOPHATIC, CONTINUITY, DANTE, DOGMA, EMERSON, EVIL, FILIOQUE, GIBBON, HERESY, HELLENIZATION, MARY, MEDIEVAL, NATURAL THEOLOGY, MYSTERY, PAUL THE APOSTLE, PATRISTICS, REVELATION, SCHLEIERMACHER, TEXT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT, THOMAS AQUINAS
And here’s a passage I particularly like from the SACRED SCIENCE entry:
Philosophy is a product of the natural reason and concerns the realms of reality that are accessible to reason; theology as “sacred science,” on the other hand, is charged with the interpretation of a truth that is said to have been revealed supernaturally. Thomas Aquinas put the distinction succinctly: “There is no reason why those things which are treated by the philosophical sciences, in so far as they can be known by the light of natural reason, may not also be treated by another science in so far as they are known by the light of the divine revelation. Hence the theology included in sacred doctrine differs from that theology which is part of philosophy.”
But the very theology of Thomas Aquinas shows that this formal distinction between the tasks of philosophy and of theology does not prevent a theologian from interpreting the data of revelation in a particular way because of a prior commitment to a particular philosophy. Dealing as it does with the nature of being and the rules of human thought, philosophy affects the work of the theologian throughout any system of Christian doctrine (and there were philosophical systems before there were theological systems of Christian doctrine). Therefore Christian theology has not been able to avoid philosophy even when it wanted to; although Tertullian (ca. 160-ca.225) and Luther denounced the incursion of philosophy into Christian thought as a perversion, both found themselves obliged to draw upon philosophical sources for their own expositions of Christian thought. Conversely, even the most philosophically inclined theologians have been unable to bend the facts of Christian revelation into total conformity with their metaphysics; for Christianity as a history, as a proclamation, and as a sacramental life has refused to become completely malleable even in the hands of ancient Neoplatonists or modern Hegelians.
As you can probably gather, one of the strengths of Pelikan’s work is the way he is basically orthodox, in the broad sense, but is at all points aware of the best aspects of modern scholarship, and particularly in the area of the history of doctrine. The same quality is noticeable in his magnum opus mentioned above, The Christian Tradition, buttressed on every page with extensive references. As for Pelikan’s other “popular” books, I’ve only read Mary through the Centuries, which while an excellent and beautiful book, seems to have a bit of filler. And I don’t even want to know what he says in a 2004 book titled Interpreting the Bible and the Constitution! Originalist me, I’d bet he gets the constitutional side of the topic more wrong than right—I recall being told by someone who knew Pelikan and his wife at St. Vladimir’s Seminary that their politics were fairly typical academic/New York “moderate liberal.” Don’t know if that’s true, but despite his good sense shown on nearly all church-history, Biblical, and theological topics, I would not be shocked if it broke down when it came to American constitutional politics circa the 1990s and early aughts.
In any case, I can’t recommend The Melody of Theology enough, and especially for us politics/culture/philosophy-focused types at PostModernConservative who are believers, and thus who know that theology is a necessary science and one we have a duty to engage in, but cannot spend the bulk of our scholarly time with.
Seaton has translated works by contemporary French thinkers Pierre Manent, Rémi Brague, and Chantal Delsol, and under the direction of James T. Schleifer, did much of the work for the best translation of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, in the epic Liberty Fund edition. I suspect no-one knows Manent’s thought better, and Manent is one of most important political philosophers of our time.
What a wonderful find! I'm not a Christian but will certainly pick up any of Pelikan's works if I chance to find one in my local charity shop.